Bicycle my Old Friend

Bicycling brings solitude. A solo sport that allows me to reach inside to my own strength, meditating on the rolling of the pedals. Noticing my breathing change with the terrains of the mind. Flying downhill thoughts race without a care and at the same time

watching with more awareness. Slowly uphill the pedaling meets the resistance to push through with the help of the breath. More times

than not the slowness gives the mind permission to wonder to places it has long wanted to explore.

The minds exploration often is the driver to get me on the bike. Up hills slowly move me through the inner journey, down hills blast me into the thrill of the ride. It’s funny how the bike and I flow together; the pedal stroke; the breath; the mind. It’s a precious time to spend with myself to center myself, to prepare myself for the rest of the day. My bicycle, my best friend through thick and thin, takes me places I would have never gone without it.

The bicycle became my best friend when I was five. We stayed together through moves across the globe, through elementary school. Then for years I went my way and lost sight of my friend the bicycle until I fell in love with Seattle. The longest ride, with my bestest friend from New York City to Seattle, we rode together to a new way of life. Over mountains, through the plains, confronting bears, slowly over hills, fast through waterways. A journey we both enjoyed.

When I haven’t bicycled for a while it’s hard for me to get on my bicycle.  To hone the radar that tunes me in to watch the road.  Once a car pulled in front of me, I plunge moving both hands to the breaks squeezing in unison as hard as I can without thinking. The bike goes into a flying summersault, I can’t unscramble from the bike, no choice but to go with the bicycle, holding my head down. On the ground, I watched as the car that slammed on their brakes drives right by.  A woman who saw the near miss came up asking me if I was alright. Not focusing well, I couldn’t think about the question at first, then when I was present enough, I managed to say, “I think so.” 

Looking over my bicycle asking it the same question, “Are you OK.” Closely examining I turn the wheels, jiggling the handle bars, twirling the pedals, she was OK too. What would I ever do without my best friend the bicycle? Life would dull to a cloudy gray, the feeling of the wind on my face would be lost, and the internal me would go dormant. I wouldn’t be myself. Bicycle, my old friend I’d be left behind if you were gone, bicycle my old friend I’d walk alone if you stopped to roll. I will always put my bicycle back together, saving us both from becoming obsolete.

All these memories came back when I was given a book “Sally Jean the Bicycle Queen,” for Christmas.

Writing a Memoir; An Inner Journey

As many of you surmised, I have a strong sense of wanderlust.  Now I’m on an inner journey, writing my memoir.  In this journey I am  crossing terrain more strenuous than hiking the Himalayas, more uncomfortable than crossing the Sahel in a make shift bus, more enduring than the pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. All these outside physical challenges in the past, I took on with enthusiasm.  Comparing this process to physical challenges in my life helps me understand. At points along these challenges’ reluctance, doubt, and fear comes from within. It’s this inner self that I’m exploring.  The times in my life when I was clueless on what to do as I drifted to becoming an adult.  I still have those days today but I make better decisions.

I’m well on my way on this inner journey that’s how I know all this. The view from here scares me.  I turn in to find myself alone as I write my memoir down on the page. Yet I tough it out moving forward writing as much as I can get out.  A scene can be written over and over again.  One rewrite for each layer of memory.   Resisting the depths, depths that I have already traveled but don’t always want to go back to, but I must.

Do you look inward, trying to make sense of day to day living, or of your past life?  Many of us do this at different times, in different ways.  Significant times.  Times of turmoil.  For me, writing my memoir has thrown me into emotional chaos, not unexpected chaos but chaos none the same that throws me into evaluating my life.  I’m doing this by choice.  Other times I have gone into life evaluation mode because of some outside influence that has rocked my world. What I find interesting is that when I’m on a traveling adventure, I’m more malleable to adapting to outside influences that go against who I am. I’m constantly process my life.

Past memories don’t always reflect who we are today.  In writing a memoir one takes those memories, write them down as honestly as we can as we process how we got there to here.  Parents don’t always share their adolescence with their kids.  My sister and I defiantly agreed on topics off limits.  Most of those have come out but there are events I’m sure I have not told anyone.  Now it’s time to write them down and come to terms with them.  To realize events that I haven’t thought of in years. Most have lessons that I learned from.  These are the most satisfying to write down, to look at in hind sight.

The next year will both unsettle me and settle me. I learned this from a day I cooked bread all day and wrote.  This is what home feels like, I thought at the end of the day.  A warm, cozy place to just be.  My memoir is all about finding “Home,” for me.  Something as a military brat I never comprehended.  This year is the process of feeling comfortable at home with family and friends.  As scary as this journey is, I look forward to moving through memories and coming out to a better understanding of the blessings I have today.

Pooping is a Matter of Public Policy

“EVERYBODY POOS!  That is this year’s Real Change’s call for donations. The donations will go to funding 5 mobile pit stops in the Seattle’s 2020 budget.  Homelessness is more complicated than toilets, or homes. The homeless are often degraded for defecating in  public because the public observes this around town. People complain about it.  But where do you expect homeless people to go to the  bathroom?Do we give $10 for the mobile pit stops to ease our consciousness?

Think about it, many civil rights movements of disenfranchised populations have at some point made toilets an issue during the struggle.  Civil Rights of the 1960’s; segregated bathrooms, Trans Gender of 2000’s; gender specific bathrooms, International development; Sanitation particularly toilets, and a recent movement for basic human rights, Immigrant detention centers with no descend sanitation facilities. This list to me indicates that having a clean bathroom with flushed toilet is a privilege of the few in this world.  It is a privilege of everyone but the poor, the mentally ill, and transgender people and any disenfranchised population. 

Several years ago, when I commuted to work, I got obsessed with how inaccessible bathrooms are in down town Seattle. I’d gotten in the habit of going in early to slip into a coffee shop to write in my journal.  Mostly I ended up frequenting the same café every morning because I managed to get the access code to the bathroom without buying coffee.  I would walked in sit down put my commuter coffee mug on the table even though it was empty, pulled out my journal and start writing.  No one bothered me, I am white middle class and everyone assumed I had bought coffee and was enjoying it as I wrote.

My regular coffee place came after trying several different ones.  The first coffee place I went to I would go up to the second floor, hideout in a corner and write but when I went downstairs there were so few customers, they knew I hadn’t bought anything.  Another one when I asked for the code, asked me if I’d bought something, I didn’t lie and said no, they said they couldn’t give me the code until I bought something.  I must have tried five coffee places before finding my regular place.  I would see coffee place after coffee place refusing people bathroom access because they didn’t buy something. 

One morning I sat in a Starbucks, I needed to go to a café in a different part of town because of an appointment.  I’d finished writing in my journal and started my other favorite past time watching people.  A gentleman came in the place carrying a Starbucks coffee cup with a lid on it.  He walked up to the counter holding his cup as he asked for the bathroom code.  He went into the bathroom, came out and left.  I thought that was genius, I wanted to save Starbuck cups and hand them out to anyone who needed a bathroom.  I didn’t and this certainly wasn’t “The,” solution.”  But I have to ask what is?

One solution the City of Seattle tried fifteen years ago as a public bathroom solution for the homeless lasted three years.  The city spent about $1 million each on five high-tech toilets. The intent was to address public health and public safety concerns with self-cleaning bathrooms. The public policy failed and all five high-tech toilets were taken away within three years.  The urgent need for public toilets did not go away.

Recently Mark Lloyd, a software developer, came up with a safe place for homeless people to use the bathroom. Lloyd’s toilet kit invention can be easily assembled just about anywhere. Each kit consists of a small pop-up tent the size of a phone booth, a 5-gallon plastic bucket, cat litter, garbage bags, toilet paper, sanitizer, and a toilet seat.  One woman interviewed by NPR about Lloyd’s kit said she gets fewer UTI’s now that she’s using it.  She highlights another issue about access to bathrooms, health.

The City of Seattle’s homeless budget for 2020 reflects the debate over whether to spend on temporary strategies such as shelter or on more permanent solutions such as housing.  Like Lloyd’s toilet kit that will give relief to some for now so will Seattle’s homeless funding for 2020.  As Lloyd did, seeing a problem and not taking punitive action but found a temporary solution to reach out to those people in need in his neighborhood so should communities across Seattle and King County.  Homelessness is not solved by public policy alone, homelessness needs a community to stand up, reach out, and do something.